A century ago, the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes introduced the world to a revolutionary design aesthetic that would forever change the landscape of art, architecture, and luxury goods. This groundbreaking exhibition, which ran from April through October 1925, established what we now know as Art Deco - a bold, geometric style that embodied the optimism and modernity of the Jazz Age. Today, as the jewelry world marks the centennial of this pivotal moment, the influence of Art Deco continues to inspire contemporary designers with its timeless blend of sophistication and innovation.

The 1925 Paris Exposition was a watershed moment in design history, opening its twelve monumental gates on April 28 to showcase a new vision for the modern world. The exhibition, which had been planned as early as 1908 but delayed by World War I, aimed to elevate the decorative arts through a revolutionary synthesis of design, art, craft, and industry. French pavilions dominated the landscape from the Esplanade des Invalides to the banks of the Seine, though notably absent were Germany and the United States. The event's strict rules demanded total originality - no copies, pastiches, or reworkings of earlier styles were permitted, signaling a decisive break with the past.

Jewelry played a prominent role in the exposition, with most French exhibitors housed in an ultra-chic hall in the Grand Palais designed by Éric Bagge. However, Cartier made a strategic decision to showcase its pieces alongside couturiers in the Pavillon de l'Élégance, highlighting the emerging connection between jewelry, fashion, and the new emancipated femininity of the era. One of the exhibition's most daring pieces was Cartier's Bérénice neck ornament, a geometric composition of diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and black enamel that draped boldly across the collarbone and down over the shoulders - a design that was utterly revolutionary for its time.

The Art Deco movement drew inspiration from a rich tapestry of cultural influences that reflected the era's global connectivity and fascination with the exotic. Cubism, abstraction, and Russian Constructivism provided artistic foundation, while Islamic architecture and African art contributed decorative elements. The Bauhaus movement, the Ballets Russes, and Hollywood's silver screen all left their mark on the aesthetic. Perhaps most significantly, the machine age itself - with its emphasis on factories, assembly lines, and speed of travel by automobile, boat, train, and plane - became a defining influence on the style's streamlined sensibility.

Cartier had begun experimenting with geometric, abstracted forms as early as 1904, but this exploration accelerated around 1910 through the fruitful collaboration between Louis Cartier and designer Charles Jacqueau. Together, they became the architects of Art Deco jewelry style, developing a visual language characterized by purity of form, linear silhouettes, striking color combinations, and the effortless interpretation of cultural influences. Louis Cartier's passion for collecting Islamic art played a formative role in the house's visual vocabulary, while India's influence manifested most famously in the Tutti Frutti jewels - clusters of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds rendered as fruit and foliage that channeled the subcontinent's vibrant colors and gem-carving traditions.

The transformative power of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes cannot be overstated in shaping the Art Deco aesthetic. The 1910 performance of Scheherazade dazzled Parisian society with its sensual Orientalism and, above all, its revolutionary sets and costumes. The production's rich, riotous hues inspired by Eastern and Islamic decoration disrupted the restrained all-white or pale-pastel palette of Belle Époque jewelry. The striking juxtaposition of sapphires and emeralds became especially arresting, with Cartier developing a signature approach of accenting blue and green colors with turquoise, lapis, and other colored gems. Additional influences flowed in from China and Japan, while the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb introduced ancient Egyptian ornamental conventions that proved perfectly suited to the era's graphic sensibilities.

The term "Art Deco" - coined in the late 1960s following a 1966 exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris - actually encompasses two distinct jewelry styles, both showcased at the 1925 exposition. The first was figurative yet mannered and ultra-luxurious, featuring abstracted and geometricized 18th-century revival motifs from the Belle Époque period. This style was the specialty of the grandes maisons, with Lacloche's color-saturated Oriental fantasies bolstering the company's reputation. Van Cleef & Arpels' prize-winning Fleurs Enlacées bracelet exemplified this approach - a wide diamond band embedded with red roses, their petals paved with velvety buff-top rubies. Boucheron collaborated with artist Lucien Hirtz on spectacular carved hardstone jewels that created curvaceous yet linear mosaics of onyx, lapis, coral, and jade.

The second iteration of Art Deco was resolutely modernist, architectural, non-figurative, and graphic. This avant-garde style was championed by young creatives who took a more cerebral, radical approach to jewelry design. Jean Fouquet, Raymond Templier, and Gérard Sandoz, all from families of jewelers, along with the firm Dusausoy, created work that was rigorously geometric, mechanistic, and architectural. They replaced intrinsic value with artistic worth, often suppressing color in favor of gray gold, platinum, and diamonds. Jean Després preferred silver combined with onyx or lapis, while Fouquet incorporated large, clean-cut gems like citrine or aquamarine as if they were color blocks in an abstract painting.

The legacy of the 1925 Paris Exposition has endured for a full century, providing a template for modernism that continues to influence jewelry design today. In our current era of advanced technology, science, and space exploration, Art Deco's emphasis on pure line, form, and color has found renewed relevance. The figurative fantasies and complex storytelling of millennium-era pieces are increasingly being replaced by compositions emphasizing abstract and linear designs. While Art Deco has inspired previous revivals, notably during the social upheaval of the 1970s and the minimalist wave of the 1990s, today's interpretation goes deeper, yielding richer and more complex design rewards.

Contemporary luxury houses are reimagining Art Deco elements for the modern era with sophisticated new interpretations. Cartier's latest collection, En Équilibre, exemplifies this approach with its focus on purity of form, powerful volumes, and the contrast of black and white or intense colors. As creative director of high jewelry Jacqueline Karachi explains, the collection represents "a balancing act between sophistication and simplicity." The extreme stylization and interwoven geometry of pieces like the Tsagaan necklace capture natural forms through Art Deco-inspired abstraction, while the interplay of diamond cuts with onyx reprises the signature monochrome aesthetic that defines Cartier's style.

Graff, the world-renowned diamond house, has similarly drawn on Art Deco's streamlined simplicity to showcase superlative gems. Under the direction of François Graff, the house has taken an increasingly design-driven approach, as demonstrated in this year's Graff 1963 high jewelry suite. The collection's dramatic necklace, bracelet, and earrings channel the house's original inspiration through abstract and kaleidoscopic patterns translated in diamonds of various cuts and shapes, with hypnotic concentric ovals outlined by fine streams of emeralds creating an energy that pays homage to Art Deco's geometric precision.

Individual designer jewelers have found particular resonance with the 1920s drive toward innovation and boundary-pushing creativity. Rome-based Fabio Salini has spent over 25 years developing an entirely new expression for jewelry aligned with contemporary art. His explorations have led him through experiments with diverse materials to enable technically complex compositions of geometric three-dimensional forms filled with movement, light, color, and texture. Salini believes that elevating jewelry to an art form requires an underlying concept or message, exemplified in his Specchio (Mirror) creations that invite viewers to look more closely and reflect more deeply.

Athens-based designer Nikos Koulis finds constant intrigue in Art Deco's rule-breaking audacity, which has guided his search for stylistic identity. "I'm constantly intrigued by the idea of taking a classic pillar from the past and redefining it on my own terms," he explains. Koulis works to soften austere lines and introduce fluidity to architectural purity, experimenting with black enamel using Greek techniques that allow him to set diamonds with remarkable lightness. The result, he notes, is "a blend of art deco with a contemporary edge and the essence of my heritage."

London-based designer Lily Gabriella draws inspiration from the bold structure, refined geometry, and fearless elegance achieved by 1920s designers, but rather than replicate their work, she captures "the spirit of deco - its clarity, confidence and timeless modernity - which feels as relevant today as ever." Her approach involves reimagining classic Art Deco color clashes, such as mixing pink rhodolite garnet with bright green tsavorites in her Cardinal bangle or combining deep pink tourmaline with lapis lazuli on cocktail rings.

The current revival extends to emerging designers who find personal connections to Art Deco's multicultural influences. Ming Lampson's 25 collection revolves around the theme of connections - to people, places, past and present, and to Art Deco as an ever-present inspiration. A standout ring honors the movement with its powerful square form while featuring a center cabochon of rare Imperial jade, nodding to both Orientalism and Lampson's Hong Kong childhood. Her love for antique Chinese snuff bottles - personal possessions of prestige and craftsmanship - informs pieces where baguette-cut diamonds run down ring sides, creating jazz-age light and energy that bounces from the stones.

This year's trend toward baguette cuts finds its roots firmly planted in Art Deco traditions. The baton shape, made possible by improved cutting techniques of the 1920s, has inspired contemporary interpretations like Fernando Jorge's strikingly linear Vertex collection. This represents a departure from Jorge's signature sensual fluidity, as he explains: "Art deco was my inspiration, particularly the cohesion of the visual arts at the time, and the architecture of Manhattan." His elongated earrings mimic skyscrapers and cityscapes, bringing New York's urban rhythm into the jewelry realm. Remarkably, Jorge only realized after creating Vertex that 2025 marks the centenary of the original exposition, noting that "the 2020s align somewhat with the 1920s in terms of high speed of change, which leaves a mood of exhilaration - but also of anticipation of what is to come."